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Reprinted from the Journal of the Franklin Institute, December, 1903. 

THE FRANKLIN INSTITUTE. 

Read at the Stated Meeting, held Monday, November 18, 1903. 

Decorated Stove Plate, 1764, from West of the 
Susquehanna. 



By Prof. Charges F. Himes, Ph.D. 



In the very interesting and valuable historical contribu- 
tion of Professor Henry Mercer on " The Decorated Stove 
Plates of the Pennsylvania Germans," published by the 
Bucks County Historical Society, all the half-tone illustra- 
tions, twenty-three in number, are from castings made east 
of the Susquehanna. It is an interesting question not only 
when and where such castings were first made west of the 
Susquehanna, but also how they might be related in design 
and craftsmanship to those in the eastern part of the State. 
In the " Postscript " to the original paper Professor Mercer 
alludes very briefly, without illustration, to a plate which 
has an interesting bearing on this question. What seems 
to be a duplicate of the one alluded to has been added, 
recently, to the local historical collection at Carlisle, Pa.,* 
taken from the back of a fireplace. 

It is about 24^ x 27J inches, with a narrow flange all 
around, and bears the date " 1764," and the words " Carlisle 
Furnace," and what is intended for the names Thornburgh 
and Sanderson, misspelled and clumsily executed. The 
design, on the other hand, of the twisted column, arch, and 
tulip pattern is well executed and bears such a marked gen- 
eral resemblance to Fig. 16, of the brochure alluded to, as to 
suggest identity. Inspection, however, soon shows varia- 
tions in details ; but the panel containing the name of the fur- 
nace, the figures of the date, and some other details seem, so 
far as comparison with a half-tone instead of the original will 
permit, to justify the inference of identity of portions of 

* Presented to the Hamilton Library Association of Carlisle, Pa., by Miss 
Kmma Aberle. 



the mold, certainly of the caster. In regard to the " Delight 
of Warwick," as Fig. 16 is named by Professor Mercer, he 
remarks that it is " half-German, half-English, the ill-spelled 
words Iahn (Johann) Pot (Potts) and Warck Furnec (John 
Potts and Warwick Furnace), and the German legend 'Las 
den Besen und thue Gutes ' (eschew evil and do good), betray 
the handiwork of a German designer working at the War- 
wick Furnace, near Pottstown, Pa., in 1764." He suggests 
that one or more German casters, finding employment from 







Decorated stove-plate, Cumberland County, Pa., 1764. (Original, 
24^ x 27X inches.) 

time to time at Warwick and Durham furnaces, carried 
their wooden molds with them. The point of peculiar 
interest in connection with the Carlisle casting is that it 
seems to carry the influence of the early Pennsylvania Ger- 
man artistic craftsmen to this then remote point west of the 
Susquehanna, and into a community not regarded as belong- 
ing to the German portion of the State, and to a furnace 
non-German in its origin and control, possibly the first fur- 

k 5 $ f 06 






nace, or at least as early as any, west of the Susquehanna. 
There was a bloomery and forge at Spring Grove, York 
County, as early as 1756, and Mary Ann Furnace at that 
place was erected on land leased for that purpose in 1762 
by Geo. Ross (one of the signers) and Mark Burd. This 
furnace is suggested by James M. Swank, Secretary of the 
American Iron and Steel Association, as the first furnace in 
Pennsylvania west of the Susquehanna, as noted in Gibson's 
" History of York County." The Carlisle Furnace, however, 
better known in the accounts of it as the Carlisle Iron 
Works, located at Boiling Springs, on the Yellow Breeches 
Creek, in Cumberland County, was erected by John Rigbey 
& Co., on land patented by Richard Peters in 1762 and con- 
veyed to them on the day following, and of which they were 
already in possession, and on which they had commenced 
the erection of a furnace. In 1764 the property was con- 
veyed to a firm of six members, five from Philadelphia, one 
of whom was Robert Thornberg, and another, Francis San- 
derson, of Carlisle. It was these latter names that the caster 
endeavored very awkwardly to introduce, transposing the 
" r " and " u " in Thornburg, inserting an " e " before the 
" a " in Sanderson, and so crowding it as to render it liable 
to be mistaken for an "f." In " Carlisle " the " s " and " /' 
have also been transposed. The substitution of the names 
of members of the firm in the place of the usual religious 
legend, in German, is regarded by Professor Mercer as an 
evidence of artistic decline. But when we consider that a 
German legend would not have been appreciated, perhaps 
even not enjoyed, by the Scotch-Irish dominant in that 
region, the omission hardly justifies such conclusion any 
more than does the awkwardness in execution of the English 
names. The " curious sundial-like medallion," to use the 
term employed by Professor Mercer, repeated on many of 
these plates, in the upper left-hand corner of this one, sug- 
gests a legend or motto, but, if so, it has eluded all efforts 
thus far to decipher it in this example. 



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